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There’s this idea out there that often gets bandied about; that the RCMP, from its very inception, has been a tool of political repression.

People claim that for most of the force’s 150-year history, the Mounties have been used to clamp down on perceived opponents of the state, whether they’re Indigenous activists, Francophone separatists or leftists of all stripes.

And that theory, well, it’s basically true.

During World War One and into the 1920s, one of the force’s primary missions was to infiltrate and surveil any group deemed potentially subversive. This typically meant leftists, trade unionists and immigrants from communities deemed untrustworthy, especially Jews, Ukrainians and Finns, even if they’d committed no crimes.

When the Cold War came around, the RCMP surveilled over 800,000 Canadians.

In the 1970s, Mounties were literally planting false flag bombs that they could then pin on Québécois radicals.

And just this year, a CBC News investigation has revealed the ridiculous lengths that the RCMP was willing to go to in order to sabotage Indigenous rights groups in that same decade.

Of course, there are many more examples. But what unites these shameful episodes in the history of the RCMP is that they were led by units within the police force dedicated specifically to targeting political dissidents within Canada.

These units went by different names: the Intelligence Section, the Special Branch, the Directorate of Security and Intelligence, the Security Service.

But all of them were committed to rooting out politically unreliable Canadians — and then, silencing them.

After a royal commission issued a damning report about the RCMP’s dirty tricks in 1981, the federal government decided that the Mounties should get out of the business of intelligence gathering and political policing.

Of course, they never really stopped, especially when it came to Indigenous groups. But over the past few decades, things have been a little bit better. Yes, the RCMP still infiltrated groups of leftist organizers, and continued to surveil Canadians expressing political opinions that the cops deemed to be too radical. But unlike the 1920s or the 1970s, there typically haven’t been entire branches or units within the RCMP explicitly dedicated to political policing.

That is, until now.

It’s called the Critical Response Unit. And it operates under the umbrella of the British Columbia RCMP.

The unit was created in 2017, in order to crack down on the resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline in Wetʼsuwetʼen territory in northern British Columbia. At the time it was called the Community-Industry Response Group. It was then deployed to repress protests to old growth logging in Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island.

Today, it has become a permanent fixture within the BC RCMP. And this unit is now being used to surveil political dissent of all stripes, especially pro-Palestinian protesters on university campuses.

And if you think about it for a second, it kind of sounds like a leftist fever dream. A police unit that was founded to protect a gas pipeline and is now spying on pro-Palestinian students?

But that’s exactly what it is.

Emma Bainbridge investigated this new political policing unit — alongside Tia Dafnos and Shiri Pasternak — for The Breach.

And she’s here to talk about what they found.

Featured in this episode: Emma Bainbridge (The Breach)

To Learn More:

"A notorious RCMP unit shaped B.C. universities’ reaction to Palestine encampments" by Emma Bainbridge, Tia Dafnos & Shiri Pasternak in The Breach

"Controversial B.C. RCMP unit to police opposition to fast-tracked resource projects" by Shiri Pasternak & Tia Dafnos in The Breach

"BC’s Protest-Response Team Is Monitoring Treaty Negotiations, Internal Docs Show" by Amanda Follett Hosgood in The Tyee

"Worrying’ and ‘extremely concerning’ C-IRG methods prompt calls for better RCMP oversight, reform" by Brett Forester in APTN News